The Solitary Rambler

York is one of those cities I’ve visited previously, but on each occasion I felt I never had enough time to have a proper looking round. Today I spend a whole day in this lovely city and think back how York made a big impression on me when I first passed through as a young boy…..

I was planning on making some films in the North York Moors, but I wanted to lead up to this by featuring a few places on the way where I had visited as a young boy, i.e. York and Scarborough. I passed through York en route to Scarborough on a caravan holiday when I was 9 years old, so I wanted to film in these places mainly for nostalgic reasons, but I also thought York in particular would be a great place to film anyway. This would it also be a first in "The Solitary Rambler" in that a complete film takes place within a town or city. I had previously filmed many towns, but I had always included local countryside, so for York the entire film would feature the city without any countryside scenes.

I had booked 5 nights’ accommodation in North Yorkshire for the first week in September 2015. This included one night in Scarborough, so I planned to spend the day filming in York before moving on to Scarborough that same night. On Sunday 6th September I arrived in York just before 9am. I used a pay and display car park parallel to Cinder Lane behind the railway station, which was £4.00 all day on Sundays. I had discovered this car park from research online as on a previous visit to York some years earlier I ended up in a car park that cost £2.00 per hour, so I needed to make sure I wouldn’t do that again!

Starting the days’ filming then I shot scenes by the city wall near Lendal Bridge. I walked down to Wellington Row beside the River Ouse to shoot a couple of scenes then crossed the river to carry out a large amount of filming in the Museum Gardens to include St Mary’s Abbey and the Yorkshire Museum. I then filmed in Exhibition Square to include the Art Gallery before continuing shooting along High Petergate and on to York Minster to capture plenty of wonderful shots.

The city centre itself was my next location, which as expected was packed with people on such a glorious sunny day. I managed to get some interesting shots along some of the main streets including Stonegate, Low Petergate and the Shambles. I then followed the walk around the remains of the city wall between Bootham Bar and Fishergate walking on to film at Clifford’s Tower and York Castle Museum. The last shots of the day were filmed back beside the River Ouse near Lendal Bridge.

During editing I decided not to record too much music as there were many natural sounds I didn’t want to drown out. One sound in particular was church bells ringing in my shots at St Mary’s Abbey, so I dubbed this sound over the whole of this sequence without any music at all. The musical soundtrack I did record was a classical sound, which I thought might suit the grand feel of York. I mainly used various string voices for the main theme, but for the York Minster scenes I opted to use a church organ sound.